Wednesday, August 20, 2008


Each work day I take the long shuttle ride out to the Rangsit campus of Bangkok U, where I have my studio. The shuttle passes a hundred vacant billboards along the way, but I love one in particular that is partially deconstructed. This billboard is attached to the roof of a building somewhere in the city, and my shuttle zooms by it at 60 miles per hour (or is it 80 km/h?) along an elevated highway. Lately, I had been trying to take note of major landmarks near the billboard to see if I could find my way back via some other street level route. I noted some major hotels in the area, looked up their exact location online, and then yesterday, I went on a long walk to find the billboard. The city looks very different from the street level than it does from the highway, but I managed to find the nearby hotel. Rounding a corner filled with highrises, there it was--my favorite billboard, looming above me. I took a few photos, but I thought that I could get a better view from higher up, so I entered the closest building, a Ramada Inn. On a guess, I took an elevator that only went as high as the eighth floor. I exited onto a pool deck where an extremely pale, red-headed man in a speedo was sunning himself. Beyond the man and through some small palms--there was the billboard, at perfectly eye level. It was a gorgeous sight, and I didn't even care that the light was wrong.

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